


The Holiday Season

by Tricochet



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: From a prompt, M/M, coffee shop AU, winter prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 09:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13028013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tricochet/pseuds/Tricochet
Summary: When Cisco stops to get cocoa on his last day before break, he's not expecting such a cute barista or such a rude fellow customer.





	The Holiday Season

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a request from a prompt list I wrote that can be found here here
> 
> (23. You’re a barista and I’m a customer watching someone yell at you about your holiday cups)
> 
> This is set before the particle accelerator explosion, with Barry as a barista.

Cisco walks into the coffee shop bouncing on his heels. It’s been a good day. He had finished a particle lab experiment early and got the rest of December off. He flips his Santa hat around so it’s not in his face and looks at the menu. He should know it by now, since he goes there at least once a week with Caitlin, but he’s never really paid attention. 

“How may I help you today?” someone asks Cisco.

“Oh! Just a cocoa, thank you,” Cisco says, before he looks around and actually sees the man. 

“A classic choice. Tis the season,” the man says. “I love your sweater, by the way.” He’s several inches taller than Cisco. The slightly too-small uniform cap and apron make him look even more gawky, but he’s cute, in a string-bean kind of way. His name tag identifies him as ‘Barry’. 

Cisco blushes a little. “Thank you! My friend got it for me. She knows I’m really into Star Trek and the holiday spirit.”

“Live long and prosper, dude,” Barry says. 

He definitely is cute, actually. He flashes Cisco a friendly smile as they exchange money and Barry asks for his name, even though he’s the only customer in the shop.

“Uh, I'm Cisco,” Cisco says, and Barry smiles again and goes to mix ingredients.

Barry has his cocoa ready almost immediately. Just as Cisco reaches for it, the door opens again.

“Yeah, can you believe it? The holiday designs are all bad! The art on them is just mediocre, and it totally throws off the balance of the cup.”

Cisco takes his cocoa and sits at one of the tables, opening his laptop and pretending to work on something as the new guy walks in. He's talking obnoxiously to someone on his cell phone. 

“Hello, how may I help you?” Barry asks cheerfully.

“I need to ask about your cups,” the man says, putting the phone down for a moment.

“Okay,” Barry says. He sounds a little confused. 

“What do your holiday cups look like?”

“Well, there’s one here, if you want to look at it,” Barry says. Cisco sneaks a look at the customer. He looks angry.

“See? Ugh, all of these little designs. Don’t they know the basic principles of symmetry and graphic arts?”

“Sir, would you like me to get you a regular cup? We probably still have some somewhere.”

“No!” the man says, almost yelling. “I don’t want your cup!”

“Okay,” Barry says, somehow managing to keep his cool. “Would you like to order something?”

“Yes. I want a large strong coffee, in a bowl.”

“Alright,” Barry says. “We will have that out for you in one moment.”

The man turns around, and Cisco snaps his gaze back to his laptop and starts adding random files to a document. He tries to pretend that he’d been typing the whole time. The man would probably not appreciate his unironic Star Trek snowpeople sweater.

Cisco looks down at his own cup. There’s certainly nothing horrible about the design. It just looks like a regular cup. 

He takes a sip of his drink, making sure that the liquid doesn’t get close to his laptop. The man keeps talking on his phone about how bad the cups are.

“And, can you believe this, he asks me if I wanted a regular cup! No, of course I don’t want a regular cup! I want them to scrap their whole cup design. Come to think of it, the whole place is designed pretty badly. The layout of the chairs is abysmal.”

“Your coffee, sir,” Barry says, setting down a bowl and a pitcher and pouring the first bowl.

“Are you kidding?” the man demands. “Are all the bowls in the building decorated with reindeer?” 

“Uh, those are the ones that are out,” Barry says. For the first time, he’s avoiding making eye contact with the man. He catches Cisco’s gaze and grimaces slightly.

Cisco sips his cocoa and stands up. “Dude, it’s just a bowl.”

“It’s more than a bowl!” the man yells. “It’s that they obviously don’t care enough about their customers to respect what we want!”

He storms out, leaving the bowl. 

Cisco grimaces. “I think I made it worse.”

Barry smiles at him. “It’s fine. Scrooge would have shouted at me within a minute anyway. And I didn’t get yelled at for being rude to customers. Uh, do you want some of his coffee?”

“Alright,” Cisco says. He usually doesn’t drink coffee that late in the day, but he wouldn’t refuse Barry anything. 

“My shift is almost over, thank God. Do you mind if I join you? Not that I won’t give you the coffee if you don’t want to, but that’s kind of a lot for one person to drink alone…”

Barry keeps talking and Cisco grins. “Barry, it’s alright. I will have coffee with you.”

Barry smiles brightly and sits across from Cisco.

“So, what do you think of the particle accelerator experiment that’s all over the news?” Barry asks Cisco. Cisco sees his face light up even more. Barry must be a fellow science enthusiast, and he’d be so excited when Cisco told him that he worked at S.T.A.R. Labs. They were going to get along famously, Cisco is sure of it.


End file.
